The Board of Directors of the Northern Short Course in Photojournalism and the National Press Photographers Foundation are pleased to announce Lola Gomez is the recipient of the 2019 Michel du Cille Memorial Scholarship. Gomez is a Daytona Beach, Fla.-based visual journalist, employed full-time with the Daytona Beach News-Journal. Born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela, Gomez moved to the US in 2009 to pursue a career in photojournalism.

The judges had a wide selection of high-quality applicants to choose from. Scholarship judge Lauren Steel said of Gomez’ images, “We were impressed with her storytelling skills and the intimacy of her images, especially with the military wife story. The effect of showing drug-related deaths with covered bodies being retrieved by medical examiners/police is a different approach to what we have been seeing.”

Gomez will receive an award of $750 (US) towards travel and lodging, plus a three-day complimentary registration to the Northern Short Course, being held March 7-9, 2019 in Iselin, NJ. The judges for the du Cille Scholarship were Lauren Steel and Nikki Kahn.

The Michel du Cille Memorial Scholarship commemorates the life of Michel du Cille, a Jamaican-born American photojournalist and winner of three Pulitzer Prizes during his career at The Miami Herald and The Washington Post. Du Cille passed away on December 11, 2014, while covering the Ebola crisis in Liberia on assignment for The Washington Post.